The high road to China

silk , and the Chinese eagerly brought the elegant rodent hunters back home. Among the Chinese of centuries ago, the cat became a symbol of...

Run of the mosque

people of Europe began to think of cats as “those things that the wicked Muslims are so fond of.”

Muhammad the cat lover

tradition goes back centuries, recalling that dogs in the ancient Middle East were loathsome street scavengers, despised by humans. (You se...

The Celtic rite, revisited

fire while they screamed in agony. The ancient ritual persisted for centuries in some parts of Europe and was conducted by two very differe...

Cats and Crusaders

between the Muslims and the Christians, resulted in Christians learning about Muslim culture, including becoming aware of the Muslims’ lov...

In faraway Wales

We are fortunate to possess copies of laws mandated in the tenth century by Howel the Good, the ruler of Wales. Howel’s law code stated that...

Why did the Celts do it?

people , associated cats with fertility, and so a mass sacrifice of cats to the gods of fertility had a certain odd logic to it. We still hav...